The Unseen Servant forums

Kyujutsu

Just for interest (if anyone has an interest), no bearing at all on the game. The dai-kyu is asymmetrical, it's longer at the top and shorter at the bottom. In other words, the grip isn't in the center of the bow. My theory is that the old bushi wanted the power of a long, long bow. More inches of plant fiber springiness/tautness with every extra inch of length. But they wanted to be able to loose arrows from horseback. So they put most of the length overhead, out of the way of the rider's legs and stirrups.

The kyudo (modern version of kyujutsu) bow isn't drawn by the fingers, it's drawn using a special doe skin glove with a kind of hard notch at the base of the thumb and forefinger. And the bows are so strong that they can't be drawn back with just the right hand. Instead, both hands raised overhead and used to equally "stretch" the bow and string apart. Then, the arrow is launched by opening the bowstring and letting it, the bowstring, and the bow respond. In modern kyudo, visual aiming isn't required. Hitting the target only requires being properly aligned to it, and doing the steps to the arrow properly. (Which is quite a bit harder than it sounds).

But things were probably a lot different while shooting from horseback. These videos show that in practice in current times. The annual competitions are called yabusame The Ogasawara clan of Shinano (who may or probably will appear later and have in-game significance) have preserved it for 800 years. Note the very close range of shots, from the backs of moving horses. I'd guess that that's the way it was in our games' time.
Yabusame https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zy-ITFpaR3I
Women's and girl's horse care and yabusame https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDDvSRCVq_g

Speaking of On (from Marullus's game), I'm going to revise On from visiting the Fuujin wind god's fairly famous, pretty remote (Nipponwide-wise) and and o-bake prone shrine on Neno-san. Everybody (except Souta, who regrettably couldn't be there) gets 8 On. Per the rules, Taisho gets double On as a Shinto gakusho for visiting a Shinto shrine gets double (16 On). I've updated my records, but please also update your char sheets. FYI, I believe PCs need 10 On to get to 2nd level. Easy for birth table higher castes, but not that easy for others.

Kentaro also gets 0.5 Budo for the failed Sumai attack on the wary bakemono-so that Katsumi finished off. Also recorded, also please record on you sheet for records purposes.

I have an On/Budo tracker already built into my sheet if anyone wants to steel that tab - character sheet
Looking forward to earning more Budo! If only this fat bearded guy would die already...

More Unimportant and Elective B.S. about Japanese Archery
The kind of strange techniques of Japanese archery. The link below is about modern kyuudoh ("The Way of the Bow") from the 18th century, after there were no more feudal wars. But I'd guess it's just a more formalized and meditational form of the old kyuujutsu ("Bow Technique"). I was learning kyuudoh during the last few months I was in Japan. There are eight stages (the hassetsu) involved in rising from a seated position and to returning to it after taking your turn doing a shot. I really sucked at all of them, except for maybe the first ones and the last ones. Some highlights:

-Once I launched a shot so bad that it not only missed the target but hit the kawaratile roof 8 ft above it and the arrow ricocheted off and disappeared into the mountain slope behind. It was beautiful handmade bamboo and hawk feather arrow I'd borrowed from my sensei, not a modern synthetic shaft and fletches one. I was mortified. All of the grandpa kyuudoh-sha were too, because they knew how I felt. But my patient young kyuudoh sensei just hurried over to relieve the situation and correct my stance.
-Once I consistently missed the target three times in a row, to the left. Before we closed the session, sensei came over and said in English, "I will show you some magic." He moved me to the right about a yard and said, "Try again." The arrow went straight through the 1 foot wide target around 30 yards down range. The old guys didn't have any reaction. The continued with their good-byes and see you next weeks and sensei did too. It was just a trick, not real kyuudoh.

Here's a 70-something master at 7th rank master going for 8th rank. And I think a video of the beautiful form of an 8th rank master.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh-ohspuCmE

Sorry for the delay moving things forward. I've had tech issues both at home and at work, and you know how those things end up one way or another end up encroaching on available free time. Should be able to post the next round soon, though.

O-yoroi
The armor of the period of both of our games was called yoroi. But always with the o- (term of respect, "honorable") prefix added. It was made of small steel plates, laced together with silk cords. I suppose D&D would call in Scale Mail. Silk cords, probably not because of the luxury of silk, but because of the toughness of it. I suppose if a spider's web thread is incredibly tough, a silk worm's cocoon's thread isn't that much less tough. In this period (the Heian Period), red and orange seem to have been popular colors for the laces. That's a lot of silk, steel, and artisan work. O-yoroi must have been incredibly expensive.

Note the huge helmet with the neck scales flap in the back. Would seem to make a strike at the neck quite hard to succeed. The fukigaeshi ("blown back by wind") curved and adorned pieces at the side-- practical, aesthetic, or a remnant from some earlier design?

The torso part is like a four-sided box of flat surfaces. Seems kind of poor for deflecting arrow shots, which was o-yoroi primary job. But I guess in reality, with people moving around and being at angles to each other, a direct 90 degree angle shot might have been kind of rare.

The two oblong pieces hanging at the top of the breastplate aren't symmetrical. The one on the wearer's left is shorter and lacks the hanging laced scales. That because of kyujutsu. The bowstring needed an unobstructed path from cheek to hand and beyond. So in the Heian Period I'd guess that the various jutsu of the time probably took those things into careful consideration. But that was 900 years and more ago, and the first time bushi recorded teaching and theories about jutsu was around 500 years ago. Before that they were probably too busy with the constant warfare to have time to become scholar bushi.

The US notification system isn't working well today, for me at least. Might want to check in on your games. (Then again, if you're seeing this, it's probably because you got a notification. )

I mention in the other thread that I don't usually post NPCs' die rolls. There are a couple of reasons for that.
-When I'm posting a turn or phase I have a lot of windows open. IC thread page, Excel for recording Actions, PCs summary document, Excel for the map, Paint for the map. And of course the Bushido rulebook. Digitally rolling dice is just another window to multi-task.
-I love polyhedron plastic dice and like rolling them like we used to do in the old days.

But you can trust me to follow dice rolls. I'm very scrupulous and inflexible about following dice rolls results. Even when I want to fudge and lessen the impact of a harsh result on a PC, or want the story to go a little different way. GMs have to live with randomly-determined results, the same way players do. And the idea of a story that develops along the way through GM's ideas, players' decisions, and randomly-determined results throughout is pretty nice.

For a warrior, there is nothing distressing about hearing of something and fleeing. To see something and flee, however, is a great evil. To hear of certain conditions and retreat is one sort of strategem, and thus not really a matter of fleeing. For this reason it has been said that it is fundamental to "let one's ear be a coward and his eyes a hero.
-Asakura Soteki (1477-1555). He was a general of the Asakura clan who fought against Ikko-Ikki militant Buddhist sohei.

That's an interesting quote.

I saw it in the Sengoku RPG rulesbook. Every page has a quote at the bottom. The Asakura clan were in Kaga, adjacent to Hida to the northeast. They come off in history as tough fighters, but also refined and honorable samurai. Toyotomi Hideyoshi (one of the "Three Unifiers" of feudal Japan) invaded them, executed the daimyo, married his wife, and made his beautiful daughter Chacha his favorite concubine. That wasn't characteristic of him. With other defeated clans he co-opted them and made them part of his team of vassals. Cherchez la femme.

Sorry to have moved on without your turn, Mac. It's just that I've seen too many PBP games just fade away if the posting momentum is lost. We have some GM-caused RP tension between Kentaro and Omi now, which I hope ends up being interesting or even fun for everyone.

Going forward, I'm going to adopt a policy from a game I'm in and do a GM post twice per week (whether or not everyone has posted or not). I don't mean to exclude anyone, and I understand that people have things to do other than PBP RPGs. But I think twice per week is reasonable for keeping things moving.

A second note: If anyone would like to create and run a second PC, please feel free. The party could use a little more combat or magic firepower. I know you guys would RP a second PC as a separate individual and not a henchman of your original PC.

jemmus wrote: ↑Thu Nov 18, 2021 4:36 pm Going forward, I'm going to adopt a policy from a game I'm in and do a GM post twice per week (whether or not everyone has posted or not). I don't mean to exclude anyone, and I understand that people have things to do other than PBP RPGs. But I think twice per week is reasonable for keeping things moving.

A second note: If anyone would like to create and run a second PC, please feel free. The party could use a little more combat or magic firepower. I know you guys would RP a second PC as a separate individual and not a henchman of your original PC.

Let me think about working up a Bushi.

No worries here.

jemmus wrote: ↑Wed Nov 17, 2021 12:47 am Shugendo totals so far:
Taisho - .7 (Healing Ito on Neno-san, blessings before Chiyo-san, healing on Chiyo-san)

Recorded, but please update your sheets for your own records. Sad that gakusho don't get budo, Taisho got some bo whacks in on the o-bakemono. I suspect gakusho will have a place to shine more along the way....

So, Taisho is Shinto and should receive a flat 1 Shugendo for each healing attempt (total of 2)
(That's confusing at 1st level because we aren't actually getting OVER 1 Budo, though long-term they expect a Buddhist to do so. That's why I'm using a "minimum of 1/day for healing" rule for the Buddhist in my game.)

And Blessings... ...I'm not sure what Taisho's Wits score is, but he should probably have .2 Shugendo (for a Wits 15-24) for each successful blessing cast. I don't remember how many blessing he succeeded at (or if we used them!) Can you remind us?

That should probably be 2-3 Shugendo for him, not .7 Shugendo.

Thanks for the information. Taisho has 7 successful Healings and Blessings. So 1.4 shugendo. I've revised the post. viewtopic.php?p=580864#p580864

...I still don't understand that math.

.2 x 7 successes? It's probably not the math, it's more likely my misunderstanding of the rules. Time for me to do a more careful read of them.

I'm having trouble understanding the rules for gakusho spells. One thing that's clear is that Shinto gakusho receive a flat .1 shugendo per blessing. Since Shinto focuses on purity, dealing with wounds doesn't give them much shugendo.

Any hints on how to determine a gakusho's Knowledge in a Yoga? I see that it corresponds to a shugenja's Knowledge in a School. But I don't see how to determine either one.